After failing to hold news conferences or give live interviews, and flipping on a range of issues, Vice President Kamala Harris is now slightly trailing former President Donald Trump in several key swing states two months before the election. New polls show they are statistically tied nationally.
“Harris is in fact on the decline in polls over the past couple of weeks in most of the key swing states,” pollster Nate Silver said. Silver was the founder and editor in chief of the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight and was an ABC News special correspondent until last year. He now publishes election data in the Silver Bulletin.
A few days earlier, Silver projected Trump ahead in the Electoral College but not the popular vote.
According to his analysis, Trump has a probability of winning the Electoral College by 52.4% compared to Harris’ 47.3% based on “our best predictions of the outcome based on 40,000 simulations from our model.” The same model has Harris winning the popular vote by 50.3% to 48.5%.
In a Sept. 6 bulletin, Silver suggests that Harris has “gained relatively more ground among young voters and voters of color … . This remains an extremely winnable election for Harris.”
Ahead of the first televised debate between Trump and Harris on Tuesday, “there’s now a 20 percent chance that she wins the popular vote but loses the Electoral College,” he said.
He notes that Trump has gained on Harris in Silver’s polling averages “at least in the most important Electoral College states.”
A recently released New York Times/Siena College poll has Trump narrowly ahead of Harris among likely voters nationwide by one point, 48% to 47%.
The poll has a margin of error of 3% and remains largely unchanged from a poll it conducted in late July.
The poll also shows the two are statistically tied in all seven battleground states.
According to New York Times polling averages, “Taken together, they show a tight race that remains either candidate’s to win or lose,” it says.
Responding to the poll, Silver said, “Highest-rated pollster in the country and a large sample size, too. Fortunately for Harris she has the debate this week and none of this will matter if she has a good night.”
Other polls show a similar trend. A recent EPIC-MRA poll found that 47% surveyed said they would vote for Trump and 46% for Harris.
A recent KSTP/SurveyUSA poll shows Harris’s support has dropped by half. She was previously leading Trump by 10 points; now she’s leading by five, according to its metrics.
Since the Democratic Convention was held in late August, “relative to the start of the DNC, Harris has lost ground” in 6 of 7 battleground states, according to Silver’s analysis.
According to his analysis, Siver’s forecasted that all seven battleground states will lean right in November, with the largest margins of 4% and 4.5% in North Carolina and Arizona, respectively.
Pennsylvania (R+ 2.4), Michigan (R+1.2), Georgia (R+3.1), Wisconsin (R+1.1) and Nevada (R+2.2) remain in the margin of error or statistically tied, but with a Republican advantage, according to his Sept. 6 analysis.
